Hi! I haven't chimed in with a report in quite a while, so here you go. More tasty Alaskan alpine off road riding!

Saturday's ride was an after work adventure. Shutter Monkey's final hoorah before jetting off to America, and we got Gary to load up and come on down to the Jack River Nation for the festivities.

I arrive home from work, the boys are here, Mrs Piston has pot roast on the slow cook for our return feast. Boot up and ride! Shutter Monkey is aboard his GasGas and Gary astride his KTM 200 EXC. Blast through the woods croos the highway and climb.

Out of the trees and into the alpine. I've got an idea for a loop, the likes of which we've never ridden before. Head south....

Yes, it was T-shirt weather!

Around the lake....

Climb up to the microwave repeater, all familiar territory..

From the repeater, we hook around the south end of the Reindeers and head east high above the Denali Highway. We make our way to a saddle between two of the hills.

Pretty cool so far!!
From here we climb again attaining a ridge at about 4200'. Atop the ridge the view is amazing!!
Deborah to the east:

Denali to the west:

Caribou:

And just plain basking in the glory of it all:

We ride this ridge to the top of the Easy Gully (my winter ski hill) and begin descent.

The Easy Gully:

The Easy Gully in winter:

The euro 2-stroke team heading down:

Incidentally, on the last alpine ride the Shutter Monkey and I took up here, he hit a rock hidden in the tundra and did a superman over the bars just up the slope from the location in the above frame. He landed in the spongy tundra but his GasGas landed on his head tearing open his left eyebrow to the tune of 12 stitches. Shutter monkey is a tough F**k and rode the rest of the way out. This ride was without incident. A safe return home to pot roast and beer. Doesn't get much better than a 14 mile loop in the alpine on a cloudless saturday evening.